Foster father held in sexual assault of 2 girls

By Michelle Mondo - Express-News

Published 12:00 am, Thursday, September 30, 2010

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is investigating to ensure foster home certification regulations were followed by agencies that placed children in the home of a man arrested this week on sexual assault charges, officials said.

Luis Baez and his wife fostered 26 children in the San Antonio area over a course of nearly eight years, having been certified three times by child placement agencies, said Mary Walker, a local spokeswoman for DFPS.

The Children's Shelter-San Antonio, Lutheran Social Services, and Pathways Youth and Family Services each certified the Baez home at different times between 2002 and last June, when the investigation into the sexual assault allegations began, Walker said. Agencies that certify foster homes are licensed by the state.

Baez was released from jail Tuesday on $100,000 bail after being charged Monday with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. An arrest warrant affidavit said two girls made the allegations after they were no longer in the Baez household.

Records show the Children's Shelter placed 20 children with the Baez family, Pathways two children and Lutheran Social Services four children, Walker said.

Dan Johnson, president of Pathways, said his agency certified the home from December 2006 to August 2009. Johnson said Baez and his wife weren't as communicative as the agency prefers but there was no sign of abuse — which is “not acceptable, not tolerated and not OK” with placement agencies.

“If we had seen any signs we would have closed them immediately, removed the children instantly and taken them to another home,” he said.

Johnson said Pathways cited the couple twice, for not communicating events in the home and for not keeping up with training. He said the relationship deteriorated as Pathways demanded more communication and especially after the couple resisted the agency's push to use its own therapist, rather than a state-assigned one, for kids that needed counseling.

The agency and the couple parted ways because “our visits weren't going that well,” Johnson said.

The Bexar County Sheriff's Office received the first abuse report on June 19 when a girl in her early teens said Baez assaulted her in 2007, an arrest warrant affidavit states.

She told investigators another girl living in the home was assaulted, and officers tracked down a girl who told them in August that she was abused about a month after her placement in 2006 and that it continued to 2009. She said her younger sister also was assaulted, but the sister died before the investigation started, the affidavit states.

Records show the sister was removed from the Baez home because of medical problems, Walker said, but no further details could be released. The case is ongoing and more children have been questioned, a Sheriff's Office investigator said.

Scott Carroll, a spokesman for Lutheran Social Services, said he couldn't comment on the case but that in general, “we take our background checks of our potential foster families very seriously, and the safety of foster children is paramount.”